Happy Perioperative Nurses’ Week 2022

Hello and welcome to the perioperative nurses’ week 2022!

There will be cake later.

But this is a check in with the state of our worklife.

How is your work life balance?

Do you get enough sleep?

Do you get enough exercise?

Do you drink enough water?

The answer is a resounding laugh, I am sure.

You can still hear it echoing in the ORs.

But, seriously, how is your staffing?

Is the nursing shortage brought on by other hospitals and travel agencies still on fire?

Health care is in a strange flux right now.

The pandemic is still going strong, especially with the diabolical twins influenza and RSV. I get strange looks everyday when I wear a mask into stores. Don’t care but there you have it. And the newest hilarious gambit is to pretend they can’t hear me.

Bitch, please.

I’ve been wearing a surgical mask in my workaday world for over 20 years. And if the operative field and the CRNA can hear me over the loud music, the suction noises, and the bovie drone, you absolutely can hear me. Stop. It makes you look foolish.

But it makes you feel good. Whatever.

Inflation is still going on. Not as hellacious as it was but still. Prices and life are expensive.

And there is the little matter of an unprovoked war in Ukraine dragging on food prices, and oil prices. That’s been a bundle of joy for the economy.

All we can do is hope it will get better. Life, prices, the war in Ukraine, the pandemic that people have forgot, even as it kills people, staffing. All of it.

Because as Jyn Urso says in Rogue One, a Star Wars story, “We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope.”

But this week is ours to celebrate us. Surgeries could not happen without the expertise of the OR nurse and we matter.

We impact patient care every time a surgeon picks up a scalpel and you call for the surgical pause before incision.

There will most likely be cake in your future. Even if you have to make it yourself.